


Blood Willow

by MrProphet



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Willows - Algernon Blackwood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 04:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10689375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	Blood Willow

When we reached the island, the camp was deserted; in fact, it had almost completely vanished. We left our brooms against one of the willow trees that covered the island, swaying softly in the breeze, and went to investigate. Gavran and his five assistants should have been here, well established and well on their way to uncovering the secrets of this windswept, godforsaken place. Instead, we found a single tent and that empty.

Gavran was one of the foremost Cryptozoologists in the world, and in addition to his assistant had brought Professor Veridian and one of her fellow Hogwarts Herbologists to study the local flora in search of the thing that had killed so many on this small island in the Danube. The other two members of the expedition had been Aurors out of Berlin, two of the best in the business. In the unlikely event that the expedition had been brought down by dark sorcery, there should have been signs of a struggle, but there was nothing.

I exchanged a worried glance with Karelssen. The Swede was his usual, unflappable self, but I could see in his eyes that he was as worried as I was. If the curse or beast or terror of this island could destroy Gavran’s entire expedition, there was little he and I could hope to do alone. Clearly this was a much greater danger than any of us had anticipated.

In unspoken agreement, we turned and went back to the brooms.

“My God,” Karelssen murmured. Our brooms, true and trim as they had been, now lay smashed and useless at the base of the tree where we had leaned them. “I heard nothing at all behind us.”

“Nor I,” I agreed.

“Without the brooms and with the river in flood, we’re stranded,” he noted. “We should see what we can find at the campsite; there might be some lesson we can take from what happened to Gavran and his team. Something that will let us survive until rescue can come to us.”

We turned and walked back to the campsite, nestled in a shadowy clearing on the edge of the willows, only to find that the last traces were gone; the last tent had vanished. We searched the spot where it stood, but could find nothing but a series of strange, circular sinkholes in the sandy soil, each about the diameter of a wizard’s wand.

“What could do this so swiftly?” Karelssen wondered. “Or so silently?”

Before I could answer, there was a flash and a bang above us as a spray of sparks went up from a wand, somewhere in the interior of the island.

“Quickly!” I snapped and we ran, heedless of the slashing willow branches, coming at last to another clearing. There, bloodied and weary, stood Professor Veridian. Surrounded by a ring of fire she seemed to be struggling to pull her feet from the soft sand.

I snapped out my wand and called “Accio Belladonna!” As I had known he would, Karelssen acted simultaneously, calling: “Divisio Pyros!” cutting an opening in the flames even as my calling charm drew Belladonna Veridian towards us. As she flew, however, Belladonna screamed in pain, and blood splattered the ground behind her.

I caught her and she collapsed against me. In the seconds before she lapsed into unconsciousness she gasped. “The willows! Run!” 

Wasting no time on explanations, we ran back to the beach, where Karelssen stood guard and I worked every healing charm I know on Belladonna’s ravaged body. Her face and arms were slashed as though with a whip, dozens of bloody tracks scored across her fair skin. Her trousers were slashed to a ruin and her legs bore a series of strange, circular holes.

“It’s like the sinkholes in the sand,” Karelssen realised. “Something that burrows through the earth and will burrow through flesh given the chance.”

The sun was sinking fast, staining the world blood red. The wind blew through the willows, making a noise like whispering crowds.

Belladonna groaned softly as her wounds closed, but she was weak from blood loss and remained unconscious. Only one of her wounds stayed open, something lodged there preventing the healing. I bent over her leg and very carefully drew out a long, woody tendril.

“The taproot of a willow tree,” Karelssen realised, and with dawning horror I recalled Bella’s words: ‘The willows’. She had not been warning us of something in the willows, but of the trees themselves.

The wind rustled through the trees, but I realised that there was no wind. The sand hissed and churned beneath us and Bella woke with a scream.

“From beneath us!” Karelssen warned.

“Protego!” I cried, summoning a shield.

Karlssen raised his own wand. “Aegis pyrem!” The Swede is a pyromancer of considerable power and his charm sent heat and flame sweeping through my shield, surrounding us with a sphere of flame.

“That should hold them for a while,” he said. “The sand under our feet will have fused into glass, but they’ll break through soon enough.”

“They killed them all!” Bella sat bolt upright. “The willows! So… magnificent.”

“What do we do?” I asked.

“They’re wood, aren’t they?” Karlssen replied. “Wood burns.”

“Karlssen…”

“Ignis totalis!” Karlssen roared, unleashing a torrent of fire from his wand.

“No!” Bella shrieked and threw out her hand, but the flames were beyond any power to recall. I caught hold of her as she tried to fling herself at Karlssen, protect the plants that were her life’s work; I shielded her eyes from the brilliance of the flames.

The island exploded into a fearful cataclysm, fire leaping from tree to tree. Roots and branches lashed out at us, battering my shield charm, heedless of the fire, already burning. I could feel the charm weakening under the double assault of heat and tendrils.

Bella thrashed in my arms, weakening my concentration, and all too soon the shield cracked. Heat washed over us and I heard Karlssen scream as the burning, woody limbs dragged him into the flames.

“Accio Karlssen!” I cried, but this time my summoning charm wasn’t strong enough. “Karlssen!” I called, but the heat hit me like a fist and I fell into a swoon.

 

I woke in the morning on the sandy brink of an island of glass. Bella lay in my arms, fitful and feverish. Fortunately, Karlssen’s inferno had drawn attention and drew a rescue party to us by mid-morning. 

Bella was distraught at the destruction of a unique plant species, and no less so at the deaths of Karlssen and her colleagues. Perhaps that was why I let her keep the cutting she had secreted in her bag. She took it back to Hogwarts and planted it in the grounds. She was convinced that she could tame it, soothe its hunger for blood.

And she was mostly correct.


End file.
